1217
GrapheneOS is building its own RCS support to cut Google Messages out of the picture
(www.androidauthority.com)
Good. Everything Google touches needs to be forked.
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
1217 points (99.9% liked)
Android
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Fork Google
We keep trying, but the courts are ok with monopolies.
They suddenly care about monopolies whenever a major competitor threatens to shift the balance of the market by providing alternatives...
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The number of Europeans in here acting like What's App, which might as well be Facebook Messenger, is some sort of high road is hilarious.
Yeah I still don't get why people use or promote WhatsApp. If anything, use Signal or even Telegram
Telegram is worse than even Whatsapp, since it's not even pretending to be end to end encrypted.
The real choice is signal or threema.
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I have thought this for years. Everyone slimes on Americans for using iMessage and asks who no WhatsApp? Same reason Iβm not on facebook, donβt use a meta quest, and donβt use instagram.
While Whatsapp is not great, the problem with iMessage is that it is (was?) locked exclusively to the apple platform
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Telegram are you kidding me?? Telegram is a thousand times worse than WhatsApp pal
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2 weeks now on Graphene. This is what a phone OS should be, simple, boring, juste the basics without a shit-ton of bloatware and spying crap.
This has been available since forever, though. Cyanogenmod/LineageOS was the biggest. Oneplus followed along and I love my OP15, though that's coming to a bitter end
Cyanogenmod and LineageOS have always felt like hacks upon hacks and always had something broken. While I have my gripes with GOS it's truly the first time since I have had a custom ROM that just works through and through.
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I hope it's functionally installable on other versions of android
I read installable and instable, I was like π«
I hope it can finally bring this piece of shit messaging protocol to Linux phones so my friends and family know when I read a message
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Literally everyone should just use Signal. I really don't understand why we all don't.
Because Signal 1) doesn't ship as default, and 2) requires a login process.
You've already lost the majority of the general public with the former. On top of that, the Venn diagram of "people who go through with logging in" and "people who already know about Signal" has significant overlap.
But the same is true for WhatsAppβ¦
You see, the problem is that whatsapp came very early, when it released it wasn't shit and it provided free messages which in many european countries wasn't a thing yet, everyone hopped on it and used it as main communication platform, this created a big ass network effect that is nearly unescapeable, even today i can't escape from it because i am the only idiot who uses Signal and Matrix and no one wants to leave whatsapp because they already have an account and all their contacts
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Used to shill XMPP but everyone should use Tox at this point ngl.
- No registration
- No phone number
- It's impossible to send anything unencrypted
downside: Sharing IDs is annoying (QR code if you are on mobile? idk haven't tried)
updownsides:
- It does not concern itself with backlog storage (unsent messages sit until at least one device of both parties are online)
- It does not concern itself with file storage (sent - poof, gone)
- Dropping SMS support made sense from a security standpoint but slaughtered adoption
- When the central server eshittifies, we'll all have to switch again.
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For those who got too excited by the title: read the original messages from the GrapheneOS. RCS de-facto is not an open technology, there's a massive amount of work and multiple steps are needed to get anywhere near the proper independent implementation. It's gonna be amazing if the GrapheneOS team pulls it off, but don't get too excited about the release dates and its availability for other systems (e.g. Linux).
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Excellent! Since Signal removed SMS support there's no trusted app supporting old SMS and encrypted messaging on one UI
SMS is not to be trusted because it is plain text and full of vulnerabilities.
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As a basic sms user, is RCS the reason my conversations now sometimes get flooded with messages like, "so-and-so loved this"?
Yup
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yooo! while i wait for mobile linux to be realistic for my device this is a win
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What the fuck is RCS?
Ok so RCS is basically WhatsApp/Signal but Google(+Carriers) but retarded:
- The client software is propiertary and screws you over when you e.g. root your phone
- They finally realized that E2EE exists - 10 years after everyone else implemented it
- You can't view the docs unless you're a Google Partner
- The protocol seems to be a mess
- You need a mobile data connection for it to work (sometimes not)
- Knowbody knows how the server software works or can be hosted, everything is "Google Jibe" or needs to connect to it to work
whatsApp [...] But retarded
Huh? That's literally a Meta platform... Doesn't get much worse than that. I'd sooner just use SMS
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What's app is owned by Mark Zuckerberg and Meta.
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Patiently waiting for supported devices expansion and no i don't want them to rush, i just don't want to buy a new phone to be free of Google.
I bought a second hand pixel 8 pro.
I get the vibe there's not much intention to expand compatibility.
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They're working with Motorola to make a device
It's supposed to be out next year but only the highest end devices will be supported because GrapheneOS requires certain security features in the firmware and hardware that Pixel 11, the lower end Motorola devices, and the other brands don't/won't have.
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Aw helllllllll yeah π
A big hurdle with RCS was carrier adoption, at least in Asia.
I wonder about two things:
- Would Graphene teamβs implementation be usable on other devices that are less fortunate to be supported by the OS?
- Would this be a drop-in replacement or would Graphene team need to work with carriers so that their implementation actually work?
On a tangential note, I would really like to read an in-depth analysis of how RCS had such a botched up implementation, which it has still to recover from almost a decade later.
The adoption is nowhere close to what it should have been, and instead it is now more associated with spam than actual communication. The Wikipedia entry does cover a lot of aspects, but it doesnβt explain how it went wrong.
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This would be great. Definitely one of the few missing features.
It'll be a while I'm sure, but I'm here for it ππΎ
I've had my GV number as my primary for ~16 years. I've been on grapheneos for about a year now. Maybe I should actually pull the trigger and migrate my number to my provider and finally get RCS. All the better if GrapheneOS provides native support.
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